The case of Carlos DeLuna should make supporters of the death penalty re-evaluate their views.

Capital punishment is an emotive issue and one of the most favoured attacks has always been that innocents get executed. In the United States the process before someone gets executed takes years in order to allow retrials and make sure that this never happens. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia has said there has never been "a single case – not one – in which it is clear that a person was executed for a crime he did not commit. If such an event had occurred … the innocent's name would be shouted from the rooftops." Now it looks like there might be such an example. Professor James Liebman and his students have published a work detailing the mistakes in an investigation into a murder in 1989 which resulted in the execution of Carlos DeLuna who looks to have been innocent. At the same time Liebman has shown that a Carlos Hernandez was the far more likely candidate for the murder.

So what do you think, is this a clear cut of an innocent person being executed?

Reading that guardian article I think this case is pretty shocking. What a litany of errors and an unwillingness to go back over and check the facts. That said I dont think it will force those who are for the death penalty to rethink as it can always be argued to be a one off example, what is one innocent death if the death penalty has saved many more lives through the deterrent?